Talks move on Papua peace

By Tom Hyland

April 9, 2006 — 10.00am

EFFORTS are under way to start peace talks aimed at settling the growing dispute over control of the Indonesian province of Papua.

As tensions in the territory spill over into a diplomatic row between Jakarta and Canberra, an umbrella organisation of Papuan independence groups is seeking the talks, with an Australian academic acting as intermediary.

If successful, the talks could see Papuans drop their claim for full independence, in return for substantial autonomy within Indonesia.

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Associate Professor Damien Kingsbury, of Deakin University, is approaching a Finnish conflict resolution group is see if it can mediate in the talks, as it did in negotiations that led to a peace settlement in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is believed to be open to the prospect of negotiations as a way out of the diplomatic and political impasse his Government faces in Papua, where Jakarta confronts widespread resistance to its rule.

Dr Kingsbury is in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, this weekend to talk to officials of the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), a non-government group that works on crisis prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation. It played a key role in brokering last year's peace settlement that ended decades of separatist conflict in Aceh.

Dr Kingsbury, who advised the Aceh separatist movement in those negotiations, said he was talking to CMI on behalf of the Papuans "about the possibility of them acting as mediators".

"I'm working with the West Papuans in a recognised capacity," he told The Sunday Age. "I've been in close contact with representatives of an umbrella organisation of West Papuan groups and believe it's possible for talks about a negotiated solution, proposed by West Papuans, at some time in the not-too-distant future.

"The Papuans want to know if CMI would be in a position to act as mediators for negotiations, if a request was made."

Any involvement by CMI would require financial and diplomatic backing by the European Union.

The Sunday Age believes President Yudhoyono privately has indicated interest in involving CMI. A diplomatic source said Jakarta would move slowly on the issue so as not to alarm security hardliners in the Indonesian military or nationalist elements in Parliament.

At the same time Dr Yudhoyono has made repeated public comments about his desire to resolve the conflict in Papua, where widespread and entrenched political and community opposition has surpassed a guerilla movement as a major challenge to Jakarta's control.

On a visit to the territory last week, he declared: "I want to stress again that I want to solve the problem in Papua in a peaceful, just and dignified manner."

He used similar language leading up to the Aceh settlement, signed last August, in which the Free Aceh Movement dropped its demand for independence in return for limited self-rule.

Internationally mediated talks would be an acknowledgment by Jakarta that its current offer of "special autonomy" for Papua has failed to ease tensions between Papuans and the central government.